Live from the Two Plus Two Studios - On this episode of the Pokercast: We discuss PokerStars new game format “Power Up”. To begin the guys chat about the Vegas Golden Knights home opener and Canadian winter before getting into the news. "Power Up” has been released on the Pokerstars EU sites and we chat about the format and discuss whether it really qualifies as a Poker game since it is using more than your standard 52 card deck. Also Scott Tom, one of the founders of Absolute Poker gets the white collar crime treatment upon returning to the US. We also have some funny tweets from Joe Ingram and others in 140 or less before getting into the mail. In the Mailbag we answer your questions about a tournament format idea, the Monty Hall problem and a review of Hellmuth on Tim Ferriss.

Scrabble tiles have the letters printed on rather than them being raised or sunken. You can't just feel the letters in the bag.

Also you do want the Q or the X, they're worth more points.

With the tournament idea, I don't know why TChan was suggesting that chips needed to be added or removed. As far as I understand what the guy was trying to say you just make the levels longer or shorter.

Example:

1 million chips in play with a 50BB minimum rules. At any given point in the tournament there are x players and the BB is y chips.

You play as normal so long as 50xy < 1000000 and you stick at that blind level until you lose a player.

You never have to add or take away chips since x cannot go up, only down and y never increases unless the inequality still holds true.

I've never played as high as TC nor been as successful, but with AJ, I almost always bet turn here and then decide between checking back and betting the river. Then again in the live games I play I have a well built reputation for firing 3 bullets, which is something you can't do as often in tourneys, as well as you don't have the built in history.

If your opponent does have a hand like 74/75 etc. they will call the turn but not the river. Then again, they might c/r the turn which then you are folding away the best hand.

I 100% agree that the river is a bet as played. Seems from his line he has showdown value, or else he would have bluffed at some point, yes?

I've never played as high as TC nor been as successful, but with AJ, I almost always bet turn here and then decide between checking back and betting the river. Then again in the live games I play I have a well built reputation for firing 3 bullets, which is something you can't do as often in tourneys, as well as you don't have the built in history.

If your opponent does have a hand like 74/75 etc. they will call the turn but not the river. Then again, they might c/r the turn which then you are folding away the best hand.

I think your last point is the main thing. When you start playing against very tough players, they will have a significant semibluff range on the turn here and it's much more disastrous to fold the best hand (or even worse, call turn and fold missed river) than it is to protect against drawing hands. Many high-limit players will turn a lot of 4x/5x hands into bluffs here, balanced by their turned two pairs and (less frequently) flop slowplays. Another factor is if you let the turn check through, you often pick up bluffs on the river from a junkload of hands because people usually bluff way too much on these type of boards when the turn goes check-check. You get to pick off everything from 4x, 5x, 98, QT; most non-elite players have no sense of balance/weighting here and just think "well I can't win a showdown, so I should bluff".

tldr My guess is from a GTO sense, checking AJ here is right*. In a game against weak/passive players who will never semibluff check-raise, betting is probably fine.

*I've been trying to run this by Cepheus as a HUHU hand for the last two hours, but either I inputted it wrong or the servers are crazy slow right now. Still working.

Monty Hall problem is easier to prove if you extend it to absurdity. 100 doors, 1 prize. You choose, then Monty opens the 98 doors which dont have a prize, leaving your door and one other. Do you switch now?

I downloaded the Tim Ferriss episode about Hellmuth. Usually I figure poker critics give Phil too much crap. he's still better than most people give him credit for, but yeah he can be an ass, so I figure you guys were just exaggerating about his interview and the absurd stuff like making a guy come out of a coma.